Previews

Rainbow 6: Patriots Wants to Shock You

After attending a hands-off demo of Rainbow 6 Patriots, the message for the upcoming game in the series becomes clear: It wants to shock you. The actual demo of the game itself? Engaging and original (I've never played as a financial industry worker coerced into suicide bombing Times Square).

The demo of the game began in a first-person-perspective. The player-character is calmly watching the morning news when his wife comes downstairs to wish him a happy birthday. The doorbell rings and suddenly the room is filled with right wing whack-jobs holding the wife hostage. While being admonished for getting rich off of the financial crisis and ensuing foreclosures, a bomb is strapped to the player-character's chest.

This iteration of Rainbow 6 focuses on "new terrorism," which is not about demands or hostage situations, but sending a message. It's less over the top than many of the series villains have been in the past -- after all, trying to kill hundreds in New York seems small time when compared to the villains of the original game who were trying to wipe out all human life with biological weapons -- but it hits closer to home as well. The terrorists in Rainbow 6 are like those that carried out attacks in New York, Mumbai, and London over the past decade. Their stated political goals are a facade, all they really want to do is send a message: "We don't like you," to their victims.

Back to New York: The scene cuts to two Rainbow snipers sitting on top of the George Washington bridge. At this point it became clear that the demo was going to follow the path of the Rainbow Six Target Render that Ubisoft released previously (see above). A few headshots later, the snipers are rappelling down to the surface of the bridge. Though it's a small touch, the rappelling in Patriots is not simply scripted. Billed as "rappel 2.5" or "free-form rappelling," the rep giving the demo explains that he's free to descend at any pace, and swing in any direction he cares to. Players will be able to engage in amazing rappelling breaches, but they'll need to rely on their own skill rather than scripting.

As the Rainbow team proceeds down the bridge, hiding behind cars for cover and killing terrorists, our rep gives his squad orders with a single button. Ubisoft claims that this one-button squad-control system will contextually know what you want your squad to do when you give them an order. Want them to stack on a door? Just point at it and hit the button. Want them to breach it? Hit that same button again. It worked well in the scripted demo, but the system also worked in sandbox-style levels built for testing purposes that were shown. In cases where more precision was needed, the player simply holds down the button to bring up a list of commands.

Though our initial demo was heavily scripted, the team stressed that there will be multiple ways through each scenario. To illustrate this they brought up one of the testing levels mentioned earlier, which consisted of a courtyard and a building with several enemies and hostages inside of it. They ran through this particular scenario several times. First they performed recon using a special vision mode that resembled Batman's Detective Vision from Arkham Asylum, which allowed them to see through walls and get a read on the situation. Then they stormed in guns blazing and quickly died. After reloading the game, this time they sneak in quietly, set their sights on their targets, and fire. Team Rainbow survives this time around, but the hostages do not. Reload: two team members sneak in quietly while another stacks on a second door. A quick firefight and smoke grenade explosion later and the hostages and Rainbow team are alive, while the terrorist are history. Each time Ubisoft ran through the level, the outcome was different.

You'll be able to run through these different scenarios with friends online, and even plan your attacks before the missions. Instead of planning each move on 2D map, you'll be able to plan your activities on 3D recreation of the level sans textures. Called the Sandtable, this pre-mission recreation of the level looks and plays as if Rainbow 6 took place in the world of Tron. It seems like a nice compromise between the excruciatingly slow planning of the original games, and its complete absence in the later ones. While only a small part of the demo we sat through, we'd guess that as the promotional campaign for Patriots moves closer Ubisoft will move the Sandtable to the front and center of the campaign. Planning and executing counter-terrorists ops with friends seems to be at the heart of the game.

The game is still very early in development, so early in fact, that the team wouldn't even talk about the what PC players could expect in terms of graphical enhancements or extra features. Actually, despite the fact that the demo was running on a PS3, they were even cagier when we asked about the possibility of this being an early title for the next generation of consoles or possible release dates. Right now the team won't commit to anything sooner than early 2013.

Spy Guy says: It's so hard to gauge the real potential for this game until we actually get our hands on the controller. How well do the guns feel? What's the character movement like? Is the tactical interface that easy to use? Hopefully it won't be too long to find out these answers.